Friday

I know I said I only had two more posts...

MNN. Oct. 30, 2008. Nathan Wright of the Assembly of First Nations AFN is the liaison with the Ontario Provincial Police OPP. He was told about the unarmed peaceful opposition to this jail being built in Tyendinaga. The OPP were waiting nearby to be called in. “That’s news to me”, he said. He didn’t know the OPP had ”made themselves visible”. What did he mean by this? Who called in the invading “aboriginal” police from Moraviantown, Walpole Island, Akwesasne and elsewhere?

Tyendinaga Band Council Chief, R. Don Maracle, was at the demonstration until noon and then left for lunch, leaving the truckers behind. The multi-million dollar portable modular mega-prison was still on the trucks. Who needs a prison when many Mohawks have been waiting years for decent housing and clean water? They built a huge fire at the entrance to the site, cooked and served everybody some food, including the truckers. Then the truckers left.

Canada sent in what looked like a colonial invading army? If you blinked your eyes, you would have thought you were in the Middle East. The U.S. set up governments in Iraq similar to the “band” and “tribal” councils on Turtle Island whose goal is to “municipalize” and assimilate us. In Iraq they created local armies to protect these U.S. puppets. People were recruited and trained to terrorize their own communities. This is common totalitarian practice.

The RCMP and OPP have both indicated they do not have jurisdiction in at least two Mohawk communities, Akwesasne and Kahnawake. They operate behind a “smoke screen”. They use “aboriginal police” to do their dirty work. The aboriginal police have managed to sow seeds of suspicion and conflict in Ongwehonwe communities.

On October 23 2008 Prothonotary Mireille Tabib of the Federal Court of Canada ordered that Mohawk women, Kahentinetha and Katenies, who live in Kahnawake and Akwesasne, are not “Canadian residents”! Therefore, they must pay the crown’s expenses to defend itself from charges of assaulting and attempting to murder them at the Cornwall border check point on June 14, 2008.

We know that we Ongwehonwe are not Canadians or part of that foreign colony. They swear allegiance to THE QUEEN and came here to squat on our land. They have no jurisdiction over us, our possessions or our territories. They have no right to attack us, beat us up and try to kill us, not under our law which is the law of the land [Kaianereh’ko:wa], or under the international accords they have signed, or even under Canadian law.

If we are not careful Canada could try to turn Tabib’s Order calling us “non-residents” as a pretext to imprison us in our communities or expel us from our land to who knows where. They may want to illegally limit our country to our communities, rather than recognizing our title to the whole of Onowaregeh, Turtle Island, which we never and cannot gave up.

Canada and the establishment are always trying to create situations to attack us for resisting their colonial incursions. They have a whole bag of dirty tricks. One is to lay fake charges so they can impose conditions on us for years. When they have to prove their case, they drop the charges. Demonizing us in the media is part of it, calling us terrorists, smugglers and deviates. It’s meant to lull the public so they won’t object to the brutal, obscene and illegal attacks on us.

Where does the mid-community jail fit in? The risk is that Canada and the U.S. are setting up a Gitmo “no man’s land” jail system where Indigenous people will be taken to be jailed or tortured under no one’s scrutiny. The indigenous incarceration rate can be camouflaged by excluding the figures on those of us who are jailed on “reserves”. Is Canada going to pass martial law in Indian country? The scheme isn’t original. It’s already being done in Australia where some Aborigine communities are being run by the army.

Is there discussion going on right now about setting up “death squads”??? Don’t kid yourself. These armed groups kill civilians, mostly in secret, conduct extra judicial assassinations, killings and disappearances. They are associated with political repression, dictatorships and totalitarianism supported by colonial states. They could be “official” government units like the aboriginal police. Who are these non-natives in the aboriginal police forces? Squads may also be those organized vigilantes who are being sent into our communities.

On a “WATCH LIST” are youth, employment, social and community organizations which are infiltrated. Retired military officers, off duty police, strangers, “distant cousins” or imposters are sent in to exert influence.

The “SPOTTERS” are sent in as “subversives” who are fighting against drugs as a pretext, for example. They penetrate communities and assess the security needed to keep it under control. They collect names of those to be watched, imprisoned, tortured and executed such as traditionalists, political leaders, journalists or community workers. Traditionalists are called “extremists”.

Canada may be trying to set up these units within indigenous communities. Of course, the suckers who fall for this won’t be told what they’re doing. They’ll be manipulated into believing they are defending “law and order” and “protecting democracy”. Their extravagant pay is not guilt money .. they think they’re worth it! It’s a real trap for young, confused and weak-minded people.

As Secretary Rumsfeld said about U.S. trained Iraqi death squads, “The U.S. doesn’t have a responsibility to do anything about the crimes of the police forces it established and trained. Only to report it.”

Chief R. Don Maracle said that the prison is for “outsiders with criminal records”. This smacks of death squad mentality.

The state’s targets are predominantly young males, women and children. In Canada over 3000 young Ongwehonwe women have been “disappeared”.

We did not have police or jails. Social control is needed in all communities. When we were dependant on each other, elders and group opinions kept our communities in balance.

The settlers stole our hunting grounds, crowding us into small patches. Now they want this.

Settler societies need police to control the many deranged personalities without family and social ties that their society produces. The state has become the major instrument for assault, theft and murder of our people. Lest we forget, RCMP carried out the genocide, took our children to residential schools, protected the land grabbers and jailed our young men who tried to defend us. If they attack us, try to kill us and steal our children, they have a responsibility to investigate, charge, deter and protect us from them. They aren’t doing this. So what’s their purpose?

We are told the colonial ideal is that the police protect society. Some of the worst hoodlums we Ongwehonwe have to deal with are the cops themselves. It’s becoming harder to tell the difference between the cops and the thugs they are supposed to protect us from who are coming at us from every direction. Is this Berlin 1940?

It’s heavy. It’s no coincidence that the murder attempt on kahentinetha and katenies was by uniformed officers of the colonial state. It’s no coincidence that this story was not in the mainstream media. It’s no coincidence they want to build prisons in our communities.

Go to MNN “Tyendinaga” category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/IroquoisNote: These challenges of abuses at the border require support and money. Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send your donations to PayPal at www.mohawknationnews.com, or by check or money order to “MNN Mohawk Nation News”, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much.